[Stephanie Tanner voice]How rude![/Stephanie Tanner voice]

I’m insanely non-confrontational, to a degree where people who don’t know me might say, “Oh, she’s so Jesus-y—all ‘turn the other cheek’ and shit.” While I don’t disagree that turning the other cheek is sometimes the most mature thing to do—whether you’re a Christian or not—that’s not why I cringe and turn mute when confrontation rears its ugly head or when I’m expected to defend myself. No, I cringe and turn mute because…well, I just don’t like confrontation. It scares me, really. I don’t even like witnessing heated confrontations between other people.

But for the first time in my 33½ years, I actually grew a teeny, tiny, blink-and-you-miss-’em pair of balls on Friday. I was standing in line at Michael’s, waiting to purchase some frames for the fabulous pulp art cards I bought a few months ago, and the woman behind me was all agitated and antsy, repeatedly muttering “What’s taking so long?” and stepping a bit out of line to stare pointedly at the cashier. This annoyed me. I hate when people act like impatient douchebags while waiting in line. No matter how long or slow a line is (and this line wasn’t even excessively long or slow), sighing, bitching, and pacing like a caged animal isn’t going to make it move any faster. Nobody likes waiting in line—everybody’s time is equally valuable—but most people manage to suck it up and queue quietly and patiently like grown-ups.

When I reached the register, some woman who was behind the impatient woman and me ended up moving in front of me to sign some kind of log book that was with the cashier. Impatient Woman asked if the log book signer and I were together and we both said no. That’s when Impatient Woman accused me of cutting in front of her in line. Huh? Look, I’m no saint, and I certainly have my moments of being as hateful and/or annoying as anyone else, but when it comes to dealing with other people, I do pride myself on having good manners. Even if I’m inwardly bashing someone (for example, a rude clerk), I’m always polite and respectful, and, because I try to live by the Golden Rule, I would never willfully cut in front of somebody in line. And while I definitely have my fair share of spacey moments, I can’t believe I’d be so spaced out that I’d be behind somebody in line, and then suddenly in front of her, and fail to notice the switch. So while I think this chick was probably just talking bollocks, yes, it’s entirely possible I inadvertently cut in front of her. Perhaps she was standing a bit apart from the rest of the line, thus giving the impression that she wasn’t actually in line, and in joining what I thought was the end of the line, I cut in front of her. But if that’s the case, then why didn’t she just say to me, “Hey, excuse me—you’re cutting in front of me?”

Anyway, after she told me I cut in front of her, our brief conversation went something like this:

Me: What? I did?

Her: Yes, you did, and you knew exactly what you did.

Me: No, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…

Her (in a low, tightly-controlled, slightly menacing way): You did—you knew exactly what you were doing.

Me (snippy): Fine, whatever! (Grabs shopping bag and stalks away.)

Aaaaaaaaaand…you’re all like, “Wait, what? That’s it?” Yes, that’s it. I am so pathetically meek and non-confrontational, snipping “Fine, whatever” constitutes a revolution in my book. Baby steps, y’all. But because I was offended by her charge—that I’d deliberately (in a kind of calculating, Mean Girl way) cut in front of her and then lie about it—I wish I’d had the gumption to say something vitriolic enough to make that cow clasp her throat and declare, “Well, I never!” Or at least I wish I would’ve said, “How dare you! How dare you insinuate that I’m rude and bitchy and bratty enough to act the way you’re accusing me of acting?” But, this is me we’re talking about, so my little snip and stomp was the extent of my retaliation.

Meanwhile, I’ve been doing a lot of freelancing lately, thank god, but one of my freelance employers is really, really late with paying me, so money remains tight. Added to that, my iPod recently died on me, and I can’t decide if I want to spend another $100 to get it repaired again or if I just want to invest in a new one. Nothing can happen right now—I’m still too broke—but once the freelancing money arrives, I’ll have to make a quick decision, because my commute is quite cruddy without my iPod, even when I have CDs in the car. Also, my check engine light came on last Sunday and has stayed on consistently, so I really need to get my car to the mechanic (especially since it hasn’t been riding smoothly for a few months), but again: dead broke. I’m crossing every finger and toe that I’m not looking at any hardcore repair bills here.

In brighter news, this weekend’s workload was alleviated by some family visits on both Saturday and Sunday (just like last weekend’s workload was broken up by a fun visit at Antoinette’s house in Virginia, followed by a great dinner in West Virginia). Best of all, on Saturday Dad and Jill treated me to lunch at Café Anglais, the English tearoom in Frederick I’ve been dying to try. Oh lordy, was I in heaven. This tearoom is so quaint and cute, and it apparently has a sizable, gorgeous garden where patrons can eat during nicer weather. It’s owned by an Englishman who’s friendly, chatty, and very hands-on with patrons—a refreshing change from many restaurants. Café Anglais serves a full high tea (as long as you give them 24 hours’ notice) and an impressive range of pub fare, such as shepherd’s pie, fish and chips, ploughman’s lunch, bangers and mash, and so on. It’s not exactly a haven for vegetarians, but neither is English cuisine in general. What really drew me to this place is the fact that they sell pasties—both Cornish and vegetarian. I heart onion pasties almost more than I can say, and they’re extremely difficult to find in the States. The British pubs in DC, Bethesda, and Wheaton don’t sell them. I did find them at the British restaurant in NYC where I had my birthday dinner last year, and there is a British store near Chantilly, VA, that sells frozen versions of them, but beyond that, nada. So you can imagine how ecstatic I was to discover that Café Anglais sells them. I savored every. single. bite. And I washed it all down with a pot of tea, even though I’m not much of a tea drinker. For desert Jill and I split my all-time favorite British desert: a Heinz chocolate pudding. When warmer days prevail we’re going to return for high tea in the garden. I can’t wait!



song heard most recently before posting:
Evidence—Joseph Arthur

feeling apolitical

I hate to sound like an apathetic slug, but I must confess that I’ve been tuning out the bulk of the presidential election news filling the airwaves. The election has been the talk of the town for a year already, and we’ve still got nearly a year to go before the election, so I guess I just got sick of it all (even though I fully understand the importance of this election, and I did take a look at this). It doesn’t help that, as a registered Independent, I’m not allowed to vote in Maryland’s primary. So analyzing each candidate to death kind of seems like a futile effort, since I’m not allowed to have a say in who gets the official Democratic party nomination. Once a final Democratic nominee is picked, I’ll start analyzing his/her credentials and his/her stance on the issues that matter to me. If I like him/her more than the Independent candidate, then that’s who’ll get my vote. For me it always comes down to a choice between the Democratic candidate and the Independent candidate—I’ve never voted for a Republican candidate.

But anyway, I watch the news every morning, and yesterday something related to the presidential race actually penetrated my bleary-eyed stupor. It was reported that Mike Huckabee said something like, “The Constitution should be amended to fit the word of God—the word of God shouldn’t be amended to fit the Constitution.”

All I could do was thunk my head into a pillow and groan. This guy could absolutely end up being the next president of the United States. To say it’s unsettling would be...uh...a bit of an understatement.

And in that vein, Debbie pointed me to a fabulous website, Fundies Say the Darndest Things. This is effing brilliant. Check out some of these nuggets of wisdom:

[about a girl being born with mental disabilities]

Most afflictions like this are caused by sins committed while still inside the womb.

Me: See, and that’s totally why I was born with craniosynostosis—because my time in the womb was spent murdering people and coveting my neighbor’s wife.

[about an 11-year-old girl who was raped and then buried alive]

god was sacrificing this child as a way to show others the light. much as he did his own child. what a beautiful gift he has given us.

Me: Yes, when I hear about children being raped and buried alive, “beautiful” is most certainly the first word that comes to mind. :-/

I often debate with evolutionists because I believe that they are narrow mindedly and dogmatically accepting evolution without questioning it. I don’t really care how God did what He did. I know He did it.

Me: Pot, meet kettle.

If u have sex before marriage then in Gods eyes u are married to that person if a man rapes a woman in Gods eyes they are married it sucks for the girl but what can we do lol

Me: omg rape totally sucks 4 the girl but u gotta do what u gotta do and the girl and the rapist can have tru luv 4-eva in Gods eyes lol!!!!!

Marriage entitles sexual relations biblically. If the WIFE resists there could be PHYSICAL ABUSE CHARGES (yesterday), but not RAPE biblically because her body is NOT her own after marriage, but the husbands. That’s like saying you just STOLE something from a store that you legally had paid for in full. Logic to the contrary is also proof that America has been feminized, sad, but true.

Me: Hell yeah! If I ever get married, my body will absolutely belong to my husband. He can do with it what he pleases—beat it, sodomize it, scar it, whatever. THY WILL BE DONE. After all, this is the 12th century, right? Now please excuse me while I step away from my computer to apply leeches to myself in order to stabilize my levels of melancholic black bile.

The musical “Beauty and the Beast” made by atheist homosexual heathens at Walt Disney is designed to subtly create tolerance in the foolish american society for BESTIALITY !

Me: I knew there was something diabolical about those Disney Princesses and their quest for world domination. (No, seriously.) But just last Sunday, when I was babysitting Olivia, we watched Beauty and the Beast (I was obliged to do so; it’s one of her favorite movies, and you try pulling a 3 ½-year-old girl away from her Disney DVDs). Not only did we watch the whole film—we also watched it with the dogs lying next to us. How on earth did we restrain ourselves from humping those dogs???

This is what it would be like, if the majority of people were athiests.
ATHIEST KID: Mom, I’m going to go fuck a hooker.
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, son.
ATHIEST KID: Afterwards, I’m going to go smoke pot with my friends, since it’s “not addictive.”
ATHIEST MOM: Okay, come home soon!

The athiest kid leaves the room. The father comes home from work several minutes later.

ATHIEST DAD: Hey!
ATHIEST MOM: Hi, honey! I’m pregnant again. I guess I’ll just get another abortion, since “fetuses don’t count as human life.”
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, get as many abortions as you want!
ATHIEST MOM: Oh, and don’t go in the bedroom.
ATHIEST DAD: Why not?
ATHIEST MOM: There are two gay men fucking eachother in there.
ATHIEST DAD: Why are they here?
ATHIEST MOM: I wanted to watch them do it for awhile. They just aren’t finished yet.
ATHIEST DAD: Okay, that’s fine with me!

Suddenly, their neighbor runs into the house.

ATHIEST NEIGHBOR: Come quick, there’s a Christian outside!
ATHIEST MOM: We’ll be right there!

The athiest couple quickly put on a pair of black robes and hoods. They then exit the house, and run into the street, where a Christian is nailed to a large, wooden X. He is being burned alive. A crowd of athiests stand around him, all wearing black robes and hoods.

RANDOM ATHIEST: Damn you, Christian! We hate you! We claim to be tolerant of all religions. But we really hate your’s! That’s because we athiests are hypocritical like that! Die, Christian!

THE END

Scary, isn’t it?

Me: Bwah! This is the finest piece of playwriting I’ve ever read. Now I know what all my “athiest” friends are doing after I leave their houses! One friend in particular is really involved with an animal protection charity, and she devotes a lot of time to doing free spay/neuter clinics for low-income people. And the thing is, I just don’t know how she finds the time to do all this after a long day of burning Christians, screwing hookers, getting abortions, and watching gay men have sex.

To limit one’s family size for economic reasons is to demonstrate a lack of trust in the sovereign God of the universe to provide an heritage for you and to meet your family’s needs.

Me: I know. All those children living in grinding poverty in Africa and the slums of Rio and Calcutta can certainly attest to that.

Gravity: Doesn’t exist. If items of mass had any impact of others, then mountains should have people orbiting them. Or the space shuttle in space should have the astronauts orbiting it. Of course, that’s just the tip of the gravity myth. Think about it. Scientists want us to believe that the sun has a gravitation pull strong enough to keep a planet like neptune or pluto in orbit, but then it’s not strong enough to keep the moon in orbit? Why is that? What I believe is going on here is this: These objects in space have yet to receive mans touch, and thus have no sin to weigh them down. This isn’t the case for earth, where we see the impact of transfered sin to material objects. The more sin, the heavier something is.

Me: *crickets*

The cure is to not be a faggot, to not use needles/drugs, and to not treat the women of ones own nation (people) as hoes. Keep it righteous. The only cure for America in nuclear fire.

Me: Okay, all joking aside, this stuff makes me uneasy. It’s a sad but true fact: there are still a lot people in modern-day America who think that AIDS is solely a disease for gays, junkies, and the promiscuous. But what’s really scary about this person’s comment is the last bit tacked on the end. When lunatics fall into this mindset, catastrophes happen. It doesn’t matter if the lunatic in question is Christian, Muslim, a cult leader, a survivalist in Wyoming, or none of the above. Innocent lives are taken, families are cleaved apart.

And I’m sorry, but wanting America to be purified in a nuclear fire? It makes you no better than the radical Islamic suicide bombers who are blowing up cafés in Jerusalem, nightclubs in Bali, and skyscrapers in New York. It makes you no better than the IRA members blowing up streets in Omagh and the ETA Basque separatists blowing up trains in Madrid. You, a proud American whose blood surely runs red, white, and blue—who would probably rather die than even be mentioned in the same breath as a Muslim—are behaving exactly like the Jihad-happy fundamentalists shown waving their Kalashnikovs on al-Jezeera. You’re actually okay with that? Oh, wait—stupid me. I forgot that Jesus’s motto was “Love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek, and vaporize millions of innocent people.”


song heard most recently before posting:
Paperweight—Schuyler Fisk & Joshua Radin

I don't hate religion

I’m temporarily putting my ceaseless, grinding financial worries on the back burner to show my neglected website some lovin’. In anticipation of its 10th anniversary (which will arrive in a blast of angels’ trumpets in August 2009), I’m trying to spruce things up a bit. Because my webmaster skills haven’t improved since my last big site overhaul, changes will have to be minimal and primarily cosmetic. As a starting point I’ll make the site searchable (via Google) and I’ll install a few purdy new banners on various pages. I also went ahead and reworked my religion quotations page, splitting all the quotes into relevant subcategories, such as Women and Religion, The Bible, Thoughts on God, Separation of Church and State, and others (the changes will be reflected within the next week or so).

In doing this huge task, I really started to notice the pervasive negativity twirling through nearly every crevice of my religion quotations page. All the quotes are there for a reason—it’s not like I’m suddenly turning my back on them—but I wanted to take a minute to explain why I’m not the vitriolic, hate-mongering creature that is perhaps implied by the quotations.

To do that, I should first explain my own religious views. Actually, I won’t reinvent the wheel; I did a decent job of explaining the subject in an old blog entry here.

Basically, I’m agnostic—I don’t believe that anyone can know whether god does or does not exist. And I’m a pagan in the sense of not belonging to any organized religion.

This doesn’t mean I’m anti-religion. I actually believe religion can be a great thing when it truly brings a person a sense of happiness and contentment. And I believe it’s capable of doing remarkable things, such as motivating people to be charitable and forgiving.

But.

It has a dark side, as many things do. And that dark side? Wooo, baby, it kicks some ass. It’s a force to be reckoned with. And it gave birth to all these feral little monsters who have been running wild for centuries. Sometimes they work in tandem with (or are driven by) cultural mores, personal bigotries, misguided ignorance, and countless other realities of history. For example, we all know that the conflict in Northern Ireland wasn’t merely a case of Catholics hating Protestants and vice versa. But all too often these monsters existed solely because of religion: because corrupt dogma and corrupt leaders bowing before an all-too-often maleficent god decided that witches had to be burned, inquisitions had to be conducted, bombs had to be detonated, and abortion doctors had to be killed. Religion in and of itself has spawned a jaw-dropping amount of atrocities and injustices.

In deference to that reality, and perhaps as a backlash to the increasingly pervasive presence of evangelicals in America and the weakening wall between church and state, I choose to highlight the dark side of religion on my quotations page. There are some positive quotes in there, sure, but the majority of them focus on the negative, because those are the quotes—eloquent, moving, and powerful as they are—that resonate with me most deeply.

Yes, I’ll readily admit that some of the quotes are unnecessarily antagonistic, a bit like a bratty child thumbing his nose at his teacher and yelling, “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!” Why did I include them? I don’t know. They made me smile.

So, basically, I just want it to be on the record that I’m not anti-religion. What I’m against is religion’s dark side; I’m against people who commit atrocities in the name of god, the bible, and religion. I’m against the intolerance and bigotry inspired by religion. That’s my stance in a nutshell.

Anyway…I know I haven’t been writing in my blog very often lately, and I never even got around to mentioning the holidays (they were swell; Christmas was lovely and New Year’s Eve was an easygoing evening with friends in Lebanon, which culminated in us attending the city’s infamous and cheesetastic Bologna Drop at midnight) or mentioning some of the fun things I’ve done lately, like meeting up with five friends for an Indian dinner on Capitol Hill and finally checking out the Annie Leibowitz and Ansel Adams exhibits at the Corcoran Gallery with Angela. I guess I just haven’t felt like writing because I’ve been so preoccupied with money worries and hunting for another part-time job that won’t turn me into a roman candle of stress, it’s been hard for me to pull my head out of my own ass. It’s all I’m thinking about, which means it’s more likely to leak into my journal and blog entries and emails to friends. Who wants to hear me whining? It’s boring and it’s getting old. So I’ve been pretty quiet on many fronts—writing and emailing especially—but hopefully when my life gets back on track both areas will reawaken.


song heard most recently before posting:
The Post War Dream—Pink Floyd

anniversaries

For me, today isn’t just New Year’s Day—it also marks the 25th anniversary of when I began keeping a journal. One of my gifts from my grandparents on Christmas 1982 was a diary with carefully dated pages:

I was 8 ½ years old and in the third grade. My sixth-grader sister Kristen got a diary, too, but hers was pink and a bit more grown-up than mine.

On January 1, 1983, I wrote my first entry:

(My spelling and handwriting were terrible, not because I was learning disabled but because of sheer laziness. I always did well in language arts classes and could write neatly when it suited me, but when writing in my diaries, sloppiness and laziness took over!)
x

I’m so thankful that my grandparents had the foresight to expose me to the wonderful habit of journal writing. I have no doubt I would’ve discovered this lovely task on my own at some point (probably when the teen angst kicked in, ’round about the ninth grade), but a wealth of recorded life would be lost if I had only picked up a pen in, say, 1989. Years of flotsam—the minutiae of daily life during my formative years—would be gone forever. My barely legible scribblings, rants against Kristen, starry-eyed mooning over school crushes, unbridled excitement over receiving my first Cabbage Patch Kid…none of that will move mountains or change the course of history, but it’s part of my history, and for that reason—no matter how inane it seems—it’s important to me, and I’m glad I have it documented.

I confess, though, that laziness did drive me to surrender pens and notebooks in favor of typed journal entries by mid-1997. Typewritten entries don’t have the charm of their handwritten bretheren, but to be fair, when my life began increasing in speed thanks to full-fledged adulthood, finding the time and energy to write all that needed to be written became increasingly difficult, and since typing is less tiring than writing, and it can be done more quickly, switching to electronic writing was actually a way of preserving the art of journal writing. I doubt my journals would’ve slipped by the wayside completely, but they probably would’ve entered starvation mode. And I did decide to compromise. Rather than maintaining a journal exclusively on my computer, I opted to print out all of my typed entries and insert them into three-ringed binders, which are numbered and dated. It gives me the best of both worlds: a) quick and easy writing, and b) the satisfaction of holding a physical book in my hands.
x

This month also marks 15 years since I officially started my quotations collection. I was a college freshman home on winter break when I decided to use the blank journal I’d received from my best friend on Christmas 1991 to formally record the myriad quotations scattered throughout my journals and personal notebooks. It quickly became a passion and I quickly became a full-fledged quotes whore. Fifteen years later, my collection is still going strong, and it’s bigger than ever. It’s been solely electronic since 2000 and at some point I want to learn how to make it searchable, too. All in good time!

song heard most recently before posting:
Bunker or Basement—Fionn Regan